


fake it till you make it

by twistedsky



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-24 04:09:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2567705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedsky/pseuds/twistedsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane and Rafael get together, so Petra and Michael use each other and try not to think about them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fake it till you make it

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after episode 3, so this this was pre-Michael deciding he was done trying to keep Jane from keeping the baby and pre-Rafael shutting down his marriage with Petra.
> 
> Warnings: Alcohol, drug use, and sex scenes.

“Take this,” Petra says, placing some sort of pill in his hand.

If he doesn’t know what it is, does it really matter that it’s some sort of illegal drug? No, he decides, it doesn’t. Later, he'll be sober, and he'll go to work and be an upstanding citizen, but now he'll pretend that things are  _different_.

Michael takes it, and the next several hours are full of more drugs, and too much alcohol, and dancing, and sex.

Yes, sex.

Petra is already high, and her eyeliner is terribly blurred because of her tears, but there’s no one but him to see, so he guesses she doesn’t actually care.

“Don’t think about Jane,” Petra says, and her face hardens.

“Don’t think about Rafael,” he counters, and she laughs, and pops another pill.

She saunters—maybe sashays—over to him, pushing him against the seedy motel room bed and mounting him, kissing him deeply.

She has the money for a nicer hotel room, but she’s not in the mood for nice—she wants dirty and hard and fast, and that’s why they’re here.

She’s getting her money, she thinks, at least there’s that.

He flips her over on the bed and kisses her neck, running a hand down between her breasts and ripping her buttoned shirt right off of her.

She laughs and lets him have his fun—this is better than the alternative, after all. It’s better than being alone in a nice hotel room, reminded of Rafael and Jane, and the money she has instead of a family.

She thinks Michael almost might understand that, except at least Michael and Jane weren’t dealing with money, just love.

She’d loved Rafael too, she thinks, and no, no, no that won’t do. She clenches her legs around his midsection and turns the two of them back over, her hair framing her face in that breathy, sexy look she loves. She’s hot, she thinks.

Michael’s okay, she supposes, and he’s here, which is the really important thing. She ducks her head down to kiss him hard on the mouth, and then reaches down a hand to start unbuckling his belt.

A girl has needs, after all.

~~

Next time—and oh, yes, there’s a next time—they skip the drugs, double up on the alcohol, and they do it in a spectacularly nice hotel room that Petra is staying at until she determines what her next plan is.

An apartment, she thinks, a divorce, no baby, no Rafael.

No, she thinks, focus.

She and Michael don’t really talk much, they mostly just have sex(at first, but later there’s too much talking, and television-watching, and _activities_ )—good sex, surprisingly, and she doesn’t quite get it.

He doesn’t have much skill, but he’s full of heartbreak and anger, and some of it, she thinks, is his own fault, but some of hers is her own fault too, so that’s quite all right with her.

Since she doesn’t care about him—and she really doesn’t—it’s easy to direct him where she wants him to be, and so she puts his head between her thighs and starts explaining, in detail, what she wants him to do.

When she comes, it’s not his name on her lips, but it’s not Rafael’s either, so she thinks she deserves points for that.

~~

The idea of being with anyone else is simply irritating. They wouldn’t understand, she thinks. They wouldn’t understand what she needs. But Michael needs the same things.

“I’m bored,” she says after sex one day.

They’ll probably go another round before he either leaves or stays. She doesn’t much care. He’s good company, she supposes, though she doesn’t much like him.

They’ve been wrapped up in lies together for months, so it feels natural to wallow in his company. No one else’s—not even her mother’s, because in this family you don't show weakness no matter what happens. But Michael? Well, she doesn't much care what he thinks of her anyway.

“What do you want me to do about you being bored?” Michael asks, biting into a piece of pizza.

She frowns at him and takes a bite of her pasta. “I don’t know. Amuse me,” Petra says, leaning into him for a moment and then pulling away quickly.

“That’s not my job.”

“It might as well be,” Petra points out. “You’re over here constantly, and I buy you food and massages and—“

“None of which I asked for, all of which were offered,” Michael retorts, finishing off a slice and contemplating another.

“Let’s go dancing,” Petra suggests suddenly, grabbing at Michael’s arm and gently pulling. “It could be fun.”

“We’re not really a dancing kind of thing, are we?” Michael asks, frowning. “I mean, I guess we could, but I don’t really . . . dance.”

“We don’t have to dance, I just want to _do_ something. Something wild.”

“Something wild like dancing,” Michael says, a little stupefied, which Petra supposes she doesn’t blame him for. _  
_

“Maybe not dancing then,” Petra says firmly. “Something distracting.”

Michael just sits there for a moment and thinks. For a moment, Petra thinks he’s just going to say no, or leave, or something like that, and she feels a surge of panic(which she immediately suppresses with _but I don't care_. But then—“I have the perfect thing.”

~~

“An amusement park?” Petra sounds disgusted, which she is.

Michael sighs, and shakes his  head. “Amusement parks are fun.”

“For children, maybe. I am not a child.”

Jane would enjoy this, Michael thinks, but then he cuts off that thought at the legs. No.

He grabs her hand and pulls her along. “We’re going on the biggest and scariest rides.”

“No,” Petra replies. “Absolutely not.”

Somehow, however, she finds herself about to rush down into certain death.

“It’s designed to make you think that,” he says. “You won’t die.”

“I will. We all will,” Petra screeches. This is not the kind of fun she had in mind—and the whoosh down happens, and her stomach feels like it flies into her mouth and she screams out in delight and terror.

Petra grabs Michael’s hand and laughs as it slows down.

“Let’s do it again,” she says when it’s over. Her hair is a mess and her feet are killing her. Apparently heels are not proper amusement park attire, but somehow she feels utterly free and full of joy.

Maybe, she thinks, things aren’t so bad after all.

They screw behind the stage of one of the slower boat rides, and it’s the best day she’s had in a long time.

~~

Petra is quite the reminder of Jane, and Rafael, and their baby, but she’s also the only person who actually makes him forget about it all.

It’s complicated, but it works. And somehow spending time with Petra is preferable to moping at home alone.

She’s distracting, and she’s attractive, and she’s . . . comforting, oddly.

It’ll end, soon, he’s imagining.

~~

She’s at his apartment, which is small and gross, and too much of a bachelor pad for her tastes, but he _is_ a bachelor, after all. It’s not like they’re dating, or anything like that.

The thought strikes fear in her heart and she tries to put it out of her head.

She distracts herself with _dirty_ sex—with positions that she regrets later when her muscles are aching, and that extra dash of weird and dangerous that’s always made her feel a bit more alive.

Michael feels a little weird about it at first, but she takes him in hand and teaches him.

She rewards him after, and rolls over and falls asleep in his bed almost instantly.

She wakes up with his arms wrapped around her, and it’s only 3:42 am according to his alarm clock, so she closes her eyes tightly and breathes in deeply.

She could get up and leave—it’s not like it matters, or this means anything. He sleeps in her hotel rooms all of the time.

But this is his home, she thinks, and that’s _different_ somehow.

She lies there for an hour before she falls back asleep, and in that time she draws no conclusions. All she knows is that it’s a nice feeling, and she should probably start to worry.

~~

She slides his cock inside of her and rides him fast and hard, moaning excessively and crying out when his hand clumsily rises up to play with her clit.

There’s nothing quite like an orgasm to both cloud and clarify the issue.

“My divorce is final,” she says, staring up at her hotel room ceiling. It’s easier to look at it than to face him for some reason.

“Oh, congratulations?”

She doesn’t fault him for that reaction, exactly, because it’s an awkward situation. “Thank you,” she says with a laugh.

“I guess that means our revenge sex is probably unnecessary now,” he rolls on his side to look down at her, and she fights a smile.

“Our revenge sex was never exactly necessary, was it? I don’t know if it even counts considering that they don’t actually _know_ that we’re sleeping together.” And they probably wouldn't care either, but she doesn't say that.

Michael reaches out a hand and caresses the side of her face, and it feels . . . nice. Gentle, and soft, and almost—no, don’t go there, loving. Caring, she decides, less complicated of a term.

“It wasn’t really about them anyway. It was about us. What we needed.”

Petra turns her face to meet his eyes. “What we wanted, even?”

“Yeah,” he says with a smile. “We both made mistakes. Really big mistakes—the lies, and the attempts to keep the people we wanted apart—it was all a big mess, and that was our mistake.”

“Is this a mistake?” she asks, but _this_ isn’t anything, not really.

It’s too early for that, she thinks.

“This is—“ Michael hesitates. “Good.”

“Good,” she repeats, testing it on her tongue. It’s simple, though imprecise.

But accurate, maybe.

This thing they’re doing is _good_.

~~

Being with Michael is like falling into a separate world, where everything is relaxed and calm and yet sexy and _heavy_.

It’s uncomplicated, and maybe there’s a part of her that thinks he’s more than just a distraction.

Maybe there’s part of her that wants him to be, anyway.

He kisses the side of her neck, and she feels her heart rate rise, and something glorious rushing through her veins, her blood pumping vibrantly.

She thinks about secrets sometimes—thinks about how if she’d simply stopped pretending things were going to be okay a long time ago(and maybe avoided sleeping with his best friend), she and Rafael maybe could have tried and had a real shot at fixing their marriage before things went as wrong as they did.

Maybe she should have just ended things a long time ago, and saved herself the time. Though, she thinks, the money does come in rather handy.

She lies awake sometimes and thinks about the baby. The baby that could have been hers and Rafael’s—and then the baby that could have been _hers_ and Rafael’s.

Maybe, sometimes, destiny has a hand in things.

She wants a child, yes, but she also hadn’t wanted one _that_ way _._

Or maybe she doesn’t want one at all. She’s very confused now, all turned around, and the things she’d spent so long pretending to want are now unrecognizable to her.

She lies too easily, she thinks. She’d lied to her husband, to Jane, to the police, to what felt like everyone.

Most of all, she thinks, she’s lied to herself.

She resolves to rethink things, and come up with a new plan.

Pretending is part of what makes something true, she knows.

From there, things become _real_.

~~

When he comes, he calls her name.

It feels nice, she thinks, to sink into him and forget everything else.

This fantasy she has with him, where when they’re together the business of the outside world doesn’t really exist, and everything is fun and sexy and _good,_ is perfect.

Sometimes, she reminds herself, pretending is what makes something real.

Everything is okay, everything is going to be fine, she doesn’t care about Rafael or Jane or their baby.

Some of this, she thinks, might actually be starting to be true.

~~

Michael, on the other hand, has fallen far past pretend, and this life they have together is becoming substantial, meaningful.

It’s not a house of cards waiting to be knocked down.

Below the lies—the I’m okays, and the _everything is going to be just fine_ , is the truth, which is that now, things aren’t really so bad.

~~

In a sex-filled stupor she tells him she loves him, and he says it back, and it’s the strangest thing in the world—she can’t get anything with Michael except what she already has, and yet here she is, wanting him anyway.

She’s forgotten to miss Rafael, she thinks, in this haze of sex and fun. She hasn’t forgotten him, of course, but the baggage that comes with him has lessened, and it makes things easier.

Fake it, she’s heard, until you make it, and she’s most certainly done that.

 


End file.
